Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 mobile review: The fastest laptop GPU just arrived

 The only real problem with Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 30-series laptops is its stunning RTX 30-series desktop cousins.

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No matter how impressively fast the mobile CPUs are—and our first tests show they offer everything from good to outrageous performance—they will never measure up to full-fat GPUs. Nor should they be expected to, except in the messy stew of physics, modern marketing, and occasionally toxic consumer expectations. 

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So don’t expect this mobile GPU to be a desktop GPU. But do expect laptops with RTX 30-series to offer very impressive graphics performance, even compared to some of the biggest and heaviest laptops around.

What is GeForce RTX 30-series mobile

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30-series is the highly anticipated mobile version of its stellar 30-series desktop GPUs. Built on the same 8nm Samsung process as the desktop part, the mobile GPU shares a lot of the same goodness.

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They are not, however, exactly the same. For example, the desktop GeForce RTX 3080 packs 10GB of GDDR6X using a 320-bit bus and features 8,704 CUDA cores. It rocks 760GBps of memory bandwidth. Our review called it a “staggering performance upgrade,” and we weren’t kidding.

The mobile RTX 3080 version steps back to 6,144 CUDA cores, either 16GB or 8GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, and 384GBps of memory bandwidth. You’re also looking at nearly a 40-percent reduction in boost clocks, as well as tensor cores and RT cores.

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All told, while the GeForce RTX 3080 mobile carries the branding of the GeForce RTX 3080 desktop, it’s a very, very different beast—and a break from Nvidia’s two previous generations. The 20-series and 10-series mobile GPUs were mostly the same dies as the desktop GPUs, but tuned for laptops. 

No more. For example, comparing a score from 3DMark Port Royal—a ray tracing focused GPU test—a desktop GeForce RTX 2080 Super might exceed a mobile GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q by about 30 percent. 

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A GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition, however, might exceed a GeForce RTX 3080 (max-Q) in Port Royal by 50 to 75 percent. Stew on that.

We say all this because if you’re expecting mobile RTX 30-series to replicate a desktop GeForce RTX 3080 that has a thermal rating of 320 watts and a minimum 750-watt power supply for the PC itself (remember a laptop runs the entire system on the power brick), you’ve probably set yourself up for disappointment. There’s only so much you can do in a 4- to 6-pound gaming laptop running with a thermal envelope of 80 to 105 watts for the GPU, on a 230-watt power brick. But as you’ll see in our tests, the RTX 30-series makes the most of what it has. 

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Dynamic Boost 2.0

Among the new features Nvidia brings to its 30-series is an improved Dynamic Boost 2.0. Dynamic Boost works by shunting power from the CPU to the GPU when needed, giving the GPU 15 additional watts of power. 

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Nvidia raises the AI catchphrase and says Dynamic Boost 2.0 can increase performance by 16 percent. Dynamic Boost 2.0 previously only allowed power to be shifted from the CPU to the GPU, but now it can actually flow back to the CPU from the GPU if the game is CPU-bound rather than GPU-bound. Nvidia said it can also now balance power with the graphics memory.

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On laptops that support it, Dynamic Boost 2.0 will be on all the time, without the option to turn it off, as in the previous version. On older laptops that support Dynamic Boost, you will continue to be able to turn the feature off.

While Dynamic Boost 2.0 can pretty much be supported by any RTX laptop, it’s up to the laptop maker to enable it. We didn’t get deep into this feature here, but we plan to soon.

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Whisper Mode 2.0 

Nvidia said it has an answer for fan noise, too, using AI to help target fan curves and frame rates during gaming on a laptop. Unlike the older version that just slowed fans down, Nvidia said the new version manages CPU power, GPU power, and temps, along with the system fans and frame rate, to hit the target the gamer sets. 

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How we tested

For our test today, we used a Gigabyte Aorus 17 equipped with an 8-core Intel Core i7-10870H, 8GB GeForce RTX 3080 (Max-Q), 32GB of RAM, and a 17.3-inch 300Hz panel.

Note that you’ll see us use “(Max-Q)” throughout the story. Nvidia no longer uses that designation for its more efficient mobile GPUs, because they’re all the same die—it’s just how the laptop maker configures the laptop around it. If vendors choose to implement Max-Q Technologies, then, well, it’s still a GeForce RTX 3080 laptop—but with Max-Q Technologies enabled. The “(Max-Q)” is our way of telling you the power and thermal capabilities the laptop maker has built in.

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For comparison, we drafted the same Acer Predator Triton 500 we used for our Dynamic Boost story. It features a 6-core Core i7-10750H, GeForce RTX 2080 Super Max-Q, 32GB of RAM, and a 15.6-inch, 300Hz panel.

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The Predator Triton 500 had its CoolBoost feature enabled, which runs the fans harder. The Gigabyte Aero 17 had the CPU and GPU in boost setting, and fans using the “Gamer” profile.

Using the Ultra preset in Far Cry, the results give the RTX 3080 laptop about a 12-percent lead over the RTX 2080 Super laptop.

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Moving to something far less graphically intense, we fire up Counter Strike: Global Operations set to 1920x1080 and using the “Very High” Preset. We’re not even sure “Very High” meant that when the game came out in 2012, but from 2021, it’s definitely not high at all. This is one game that actually exceeds the 300Hz refresh of the panels, and probably a game where you need it if you want to compete to win or just don’t like getting AWP-shot by a 12-year-old every time you rush the bomb site.

Yup, that’s about a 3.5-percent advantage for the RTX 3080 laptop over the RTX 2080 Super. So, terrorists win.

Obviously one problem with the previous games we’ve run is they’re all very much CPU-bound. It is, in fact, a problem for the RTX 3080 on laptops. Just as laptop GPUs are a compromise to make them work in a laptop—so too are CPUs. To stretch the laptops a little more, we fired up Red Dead Redemption 2 with the performance slider set to prefer quality. That saw the RTX 3080 open up a little more breathing room, edging out the RTX 2080 Super by about 18 percent.

Ray tracing performance

From there, we moved on to hardware ray tracing games, specifically Metro Exodus, which uses hardware ray-traced global illumination. The result gave the RTX 3080 laptop about a 20-percent lead over the RTX 2080 laptops.